Letters From The Attic
by Snowbound Suicide
Summary: A school project caused Sam to look into her family history. Despite her mother's best efforts, Sam stumbles upon records of the grandfather she never knew. There, she discovers a wealth of secrets vile and strange that will alter her view of the world and her relationship with her family forever.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** I'm aware I have other stories going on that I need to write more chapters for. However, I'm making an exception to my own rules and starting this because it's part of a challenge a friend of mine laid out on LiveJournal. The challenge simply is to write a complete story in five days flat. It's supposed to kick writer's block.

**But please bear in mind** this is a hard T. I almost rated it M for some of the concepts that are going to be introduced in later chapters. I can't warn you for specific triggers without giving away the entire plot, but this is going to get squicky, especially at the end. If you start to see where this is going or you feel uneasy, I would advise just putting this one down.

* * *

_Pamela, this is likely the last letter you are going to receive from me. You were meant to have a normal childhood. I did everything I could to prevent my past from destroying your life. I tried so hard to leave it behind me. Everything was supposed to be the American Dream for us, but that dream twisted into something you now view as vile. I love you, and your siblings, and your mother. By the gods, how I loved your mother once. You will never know how she pulled me out of the darkness. She is the reason I gave up everything I used to be, the push to try to make myself into the all-American father you needed. But you, you are what kept me alive after all was said and done. You alone forgave me my sins, and so you are and have always been my favorite child._

_I cannot apologize enough for leaving you. But please know I was always sincere in my dedication to you. Those walks in the park, those days spent pouring over art, those moments where you tried to understand my faith and I yours, and those precious instances where we were unknown to the world and free as birds… All of it was felt in my heart and remains with me in my memories as I leave you. I leave only to keep our secret from leaking out to the community. You need to have some normalcy. You cannot be turned into a pariah for the sins of your father._

_My only request is that you tell the truth when you have this child. Do not hide me from them. Otherwise they will find out, and he or she will feel towards you what you feel for me now, in this moment as I depart. You have to tell them what I am, the good and the bad. It is a certainty and not a variable that as your husband to be is so rich, one day people will dig into your past. And if they find out any of this, they will use it to destroy your – our – family._

_I can't tell you where I'm going, because I know you would follow. You are as loyal and kind a daughter as I could ask for, conservative and yet outspoken, cheerful and optimistic. You will make a wonderful mother, but you must be honest. Take this to heart: lies are like glass wings. They are beautiful until they shatter, and the pieces cut deeper than anyone ever thought they could._

_Your loving father,_

_Philip Trommler_

* * *

Sam blamed Mr. Rybak for assigning a family history project.

It was supposed to be a simple Advanced Biology project, just a bit of genetic mapping. They were supposed to write down colors of eyes and hair, and other genetic traits of their ancestors to the best of their ability. Then they were supposed to map out what countries their families came from. It would show the distribution of traits across varying countries and how recessive and dominant genes worked. All in all, it was absolutely boring sounding to everyone involved. Tucker had his done in a day due his family's meticulous record keeping, Danny enlisted Jazz's help to get it done before ghosts attacked and caused him to fail any more classes in something approaching a blind panic, and Sam had hit a brick wall with hers immediately.

There were ample records on her father's side of the family. They were rich even before they became millionaires. Sam could trace her Manson side all the way back to seventeenth century England, hitting a few other countries along the way. But her mother balked at the idea of the project. Sam knew something was off when her mother froze at being asked if there were old family records. There was a look of pure horror on her face before the mask of genial niceness slipped back on and she laughed it off. Idly, Sam's father mentioned there might be something in the attic, and so on a Friday night when most teenagers were relaxing, Sam found herself scrambling to get the homework due on Monday remotely close to being done. She hadn't been able to pry so much as her grandfather's name or eye color out of her. It was unsettling.

Then she found the letter. She overturned it, noting the pristine way it had been preserved. She reread it with uncomprehending purple eyes, and sat back in thought.

Sam's father had a family of redheads, blondes and one or two brunettes here and there, never skewing towards the darker hair colors. Her father's family had blue eyes with a few green exceptions. Her mother's mother's side of the family was a short list due to poor record keeping and immigration after WW2 decimating what records there were, but they were all brunettes. Dark brunettes, in some cases, but not black haired. Their eyes were sometimes purple but more often than anything else were blue. It was possible Sam was purely a photocopy of her grandmother, but if that were true there was no reason to hide her grandfather from her like a skeleton in the closet. All her life he'd been missing without her questioning it. Now she held in her hands the puzzle piece she'd been missing, but it was only one piece, not enough to put together everything that had happened.

Maybe she took after her grandfather. Two sets of purple recessives on her mother's side and two dark haired genes would make it all make sense. But why not hand her a picture of him, say that was all they had and call it good? Why lie? Why snuff his existence out like a candle?

She opened the journal she'd found the letter in. It was entirely in German; beautiful calligraphy at that, neat and uniform and crisp. Unfortunately, Sam knew about five German words total. What it did reveal in and of herself was that she was German. Her grandmother had come over from Poland, and her grandfather, going off of this, had come over from Germany. Looking over at the letter again, she noted the usage of the word 'gods' and the mention of 'my faith and yours'. So he wasn't Jewish. Sam knew that back in those days it had been a bit of a taboo for Jewish people to marry non-Jews. Maybe her Grandma Ida's family had decided to erase the records because of that alone. They were Jewish on both sides, had a good standing in the synagogue for many years, her uncle Aaron was a rabbi. A non-Jew married to a Jew right after WW2 might have caused waves.

_Gods_, the letter said. A polytheist religion – so not Christian, then. Sam frowned. She didn't even know there _were_ any religions like that in Germany. If there were they'd have to be extreme minorities. Maybe that was the nail in the coffin. It could've been fine by everyone if he'd been Christian, but if he worshipped some pantheon of gods, then even Sam's free spirited grandmother who'd lived her wild teen years whirling through Amity Park would have to pause. There was rebellion and then there was crossing the line. Apparently it had been enough to last at first – _loved,_ he'd said, not _love_ – but over time that hadn't been enough to keep it going forever. Opposites attracted, they didn't necessarily hold.

So Sam had her answers. She could walk away, put this stuff back, write down her grandfather's information, claim she didn't know the rest and leave it be. Clearly he'd really hurt her mother by leaving. Some part of her felt a flare of anger on her mother's behalf. As much as she didn't get along with her, she pictured her mother, young and about to get married, abandoned, and something in her just _despised_ the man who'd written this. He had abandoned his oldest daughter at one of the most critical moments of her life and expected a single letter to soothe it over.

She wanted to know this man who had broken her mother's heart. She wanted to know the things he'd told her mother to tell Sam. She wanted to unveil the monster in the shadows she'd never known existed.

Want is a dangerous thing.


	2. Chapter 2

_Philip and I had a great time today. Nobody knows us here, and that's such a relief. I love Amity Park, but there are too many prying eyes there. People think I'm nosy, but they don't know our neighbors._

_He had a business trip, going upstate to see a potential client. The case would make him have to leave us for a few weeks to work it here, which Mom isn't thrilled about. Still, it's good money and he's one of those lawyers that likes the impossible cases. He's good at working the impossible. I could see the sparkle in his tanzanite purple eyes. This will be one of those ones where he works hard, takes the family out afterwards and he and Mom will quit fighting for a while. Right now, though, this is just our time. This day is just for us._

_There was a Wagner opera he wanted to see, and a romantic movie I wanted to. I think I enjoyed his opera more than he enjoyed the movie. It was epic and sweeping and even though I don't know nearly enough German to get most of it, the theatrics were so over the top! I can't believe I ever held out on going to one of these with him. Then he took me shopping and got me a dress I'm sure Mom would never let me wear, and we went out to dinner at an incredibly fancy restaurant. I felt like a princess._

_But oddly, I think the best part of the day was walking through the park afterwards with him. The sunset on the pond was magnificent and there were so many geese. He told me geese represented loyalty. We talked about everything and nothing, and I took fall leaves to press in my scrapbook. I insisted on a picture under a flame red tree with Philip, which he agreed to after some badgering. The old woman that took it for us said we were a lovely couple. Dad told me that's what I get for calling him by his name all the time. We got milkshakes on our way back to the hotel._

_I wish today would last forever._

* * *

Sam felt a burning rage building.

It didn't matter if what her mother was describing was a saintly man who gave his daughter everything. If anything it drove the knife deeper that he'd left her. He had called her his favorite and obviously he was her favorite parent and he – ugh! Her blood boiled to think of how he'd stabbed her in the back. How could he do that to her? An understanding dawned in Sam then that this was why her mother wanted to spend time with her, that this was why she was always trying to get her to cheer up. She was trying to be there for Sam in the way her own father had been, but unlike her father she was seeing it through. All her relentlessness stemmed from this loss, this pain, this part of her family that had walked out the door and never come back.

The questions were building into piles and the piles were becoming mountains. What had he done? What had this man done that had threatened to tear the family apart, that could necessitate all this secrecy and running away? She looked at the letter and the torn page – a journal entry, perhaps – and the letter. He still seemed like a loving father, but something had happened. Something had happened before he left… context might have implied a second thing? Her head hurt.

She pulled things from the box bit by bit. A teddy bear patched and well loved, a beautiful glass angel wrapped and preserved in newspaper, a small box with intricate swirling patterns on it that was firmly locked, a bone knife and finally a picture. Her mother was maybe fourteen or fifteen, dressed for prom, her parents beside her. Grandma Ida was dark haired and smiling, hair in a loose bun, wisps framing her face, clothes plain and simple. Sam's mother had her hair in curls and was dressed in more pink than Sam would ever touch, a one shoulder dress with ruffles. And on her other side was the non-Jew, non-Christian, daughter-abandoning man with a secret past, looking for all the world like a normal father. He was strikingly pale and tall, with pitch black hair like a raven's wing slicked back. His eyes were the exact color of Sam's, but his features were pointed, his hands long and his clothes dark and layered. He looked like a professional, a businessman, someone who thought about his appearance. She searched his face for more clues as to who he was, but there was nothing else to be gleamed from his visage.

Sam set the photo on the floor beside her and reached for the envelope underneath it. She opened it to see an old photo of her mother and her aunts and uncle. Her aunt Maeve was standing atop a high board above the swimming pool, her uncle Aaron on the ladder trying to talk her down, and her aunt Shannon was laughing at everything. Clinging to her grandfather's leg was Sam's mother, clearly trying to get him to stop Maeve. He was rolling his eyes affectionately. Strangely, he had a long sleeved T-shirt and pants on despite the hot summer day in the picture. Sam studied it for a moment. Her grandmother had been behind the camera, but scrawled in her tiny handwriting underneath the photo she'd marked everyone's ages – _Pamela, 9, Aaron, 8, Maeve, 7, Shannon, 4._ Everything seemed almost normal, save for her grandfather's attire. There was a necklace hanging from his neck with some symbol on it she was unfamiliar with.

A scrap of paper was next to come out of the envelope. It was small and purple, and had been folded in half. A child's messy handwriting proclaimed, _Philip, don't be sad when Mom yells at you. Mom's just worried. I am too. Come home more. Love, Pam._ There was a heart after her mother's name.

So her grandfather was away a lot for work. He was a lawyer. He was there when he could be. Most of this wasn't weird. Why had he left? She pulled out a piece of notebook paper and recognized the neat calligraphy instantly as her grandfather's. _Pam, everything's alright. Don't worry about me, my little goose. I'll be home as much as I'm able, promise. – Philip._ Well, apparently the first name basis thing had been going on for a while. Sam's parents had never been cool with that themselves, but she had classmates who called their parents by their first names. The next piece of paper was folded repeatedly, worn, a bit frayed at the edges as if it had been reviewed many times. This letter was shorter.

_Pam,_

_I know what you've discovered is unsettling to you, but hiding out here in the woods isn't going to change things. I was going to just give you time to get used to things, but it's becoming clear no amount of time is enough without further explanation. I've left some things here in your treehouse for you to read. Hopefully they will help you make sense of things. Please remember I'm still your father, no matter who I used to be. Try to understand, and if you cannot understand, then forgive me as much as you're capable of it._

_With love,_

_Philip_

The response to this one was scrawled on the back in Pam's angry, loopy handwriting, in red ink.

_Philip,_

_Unsettling?! I can't believe you! Do you have any idea what this is like for me? I always knew our family had to keep your religion secret. I could deal with that. I always understood we didn't have any relatives on your side on the family. And now you expect me to just forgive you? You're a murderer and a monster and you got away with everything! You lied to mom! You lied to me! YOU LIED TO ME! I love you and you lied to me and if you lied about that then was any of it real?! What about our Winter Solstice together? I thought that meant something special! I thought we really connected. Now I don't know what I think and it's all because of you! I hate you!_

Her grandfather's reply was short and succinct.

_Pamela,_

_Remember the night of the Winter Solstice, what I said as we stood by the fire? I have never meant something so sincerely in my life. I am tired of us living in a silent house. Please speak to me again. What I told you in the firelight was every truth I had in me. Regardless of the fact I was a Nazi, I am still your father._

Sam froze, breath hitching in her chest as she reread the last line, again and again, until she realized her hands were shaking and released the piece of paper. It fell into her lap, where the offending words stared up at her in crisp, controlled calligraphy, unapologetically blunt about the matter. She sucked in air again and again as her mind reeled. She couldn't make what she was seeing make sense. She couldn't make it go away. She could only stare at the picture of his grandfather with his wife and daughter. This man with an arm around her mother, this normal looking, well spoken immigrant lawyer who had by all outward appearances achieved the American Dream – he was her grandfather. He was evil. He took his beloved daughter on trips and gave her gifts and lied to her face for most of her life. Philip Tommler was a lot of things and already, the contradictions were beginning to stack quite high. They were only going to stack higher if she kept looking. She had a choice, now, as to whether or not she really wanted any more details than this, if she wanted to know what he'd done or if just this was enough. It should have been. Anything more and she might not be able to sleep tonight.

But there were still piles of papers, sitting there unread, some bound together and some loose, some yellow with age, a pool of knowledge waiting to be waded through.

Shakily, she reached for the rest of the box.


	3. Chapter 3

_Ida,_

_I know your parents have their reservations. Not only for my faith, which they do not begin to grasp, but for my age's sake they hold their ground against me. I am aware that being twenty years your senior, it must seem awfully odd to them, that we should fall into stride so easily. You know well my feelings on this whole affair. The choice lays in your hands, not in mine or theirs. I will leave if you wish it, not if they do. What you need is to try to examine the facts, and I fear you have been negligent in doing so after our last conversation._

_What I have kept from my days in Germany are not trophies to be proud of but more akin to battle scars, a Pandora's Box you really should open before this continues. It isn't pretty. This is the part of me that knows no light. But if you choose not to see the photos, let me read to you from my journals, you deny the part of me you cannot take for the part you want. I fear a marriage built on half a man cannot stand. You need to know the whole. This is more pressing than your parent's acceptance, than our age difference, than the gods I follow, than the God you do. You can push this away if you want to, for a while, and yet I know somehow it will not stay in the shadows and lay forgotten forever._

_Yes, my dear, it is true I wish to live out this life with you, to marry you and live a life with children in a house that is truly a home, a place we can build up our own shared history and a life together in peace. I want nothing more than to lay beside you for all our days, holding you close where we can focus on a better future than the pasts we came from. I simply want you to know exactly who it is you're laying with. Our wedding is fast approaching and our days together have lifted my spirit, but in every raven I pass I feel reminded that I have yet to share all of myself with you._

_If we enter into this with secrets and lies between us, know it is your will, not mine. This is your last chance before the wedding to tell your parents what I was. Do not forgo it in the name of keeping the peace._

_Love,_

_Philip_

Sam set the letter aside, drew her knees up to her chest, and tried to think. So he wasn't completely aware of what a disgusting, terrible, awful human being he was. That was what made this so hard to process. He seemed so genuine in his efforts to reform, to have his past known, to keep from lying or hiding. He was eloquent and well spoken, wrote in perfect handwriting, worked as a lawyer for impossible cases. It was so hard to accept that these two dissonant halves of him were one person. She tried to picture all of that contained within one person, all that evil, that domestic bliss, that jarring disconnect. He'd mentioned in his first letter that Ida had pulled him out of the dark. He had loved her, and that had apparently helped to change him.

But he was a Nazi. He was the enemy of every Jew. He had killed people, if her mother's letter was any indication. How could a man who had killed Jews then turn around and form a life with one? Did he think that made up for everything he'd done? More horrifyingly, Sam realized she didn't know what he'd done, not really. Nazis had a lot of positions and a lot of activities. What was his part in it? How long had he been doing whatever he'd done? She looked back to the small box with intricate designs on it, the one she'd discarded earlier. The only way to open it was to break it, but the wood was old and it was possible. First, though, she had papers to go through. She pulled out a thick sheath of papers from the box. The documents were in German and therefore useless to someone who didn't speak English. She set it aside with a frustrated sigh. Then she noticed a strange thickness to the papers, and picked it up again. Paperclips held some of the bundles together. She pulled one off to go through the papers.

She nearly screamed as she saw what was inside.

Photos. They were black and white, grimy, yet that didn't manage to reduce the horror. Every few pages had a picture attached to them. There were labs, bodies, other people in lab coats, things unidentifiable that might have once been human or organs. And in all of them was her grandfather, looking younger and so much more tired, blood up to his elbows in some, working away at whatever he was doing. She had to set them down, couldn't look at them, at the things that had been done. These were people. They were most likely Jewish. They had families, lives, dreams and hopes, snuffed out in an instant. They were carefully dismantled bit by bit by the man she called family. She was directly descended from this man. This man was a monster. She couldn't look through the rest of it. These papers should be burned, and yet if she did so she might be getting rid of the last evidence of these people's suffering.

There was a pile of drawings in the box, by her aunts, uncle and mother. Crayon drawings and simple pictures, from kindergarten to times without dates. Sam listlessly looked through them until she blinked and looked over them again. There was one that confused her. It was crayon, from her Aunt Maeve, at the age of five. It depicted a night in the woods, with a bonfire. Pamela was jumping over the fire into Philip's arms. A symbol, three triangles intricately interlocking, was in the corner. On the back, in a simple child's handwriting, it was identified as 'Yule with everybody but Mommy'. Sam tilted her head as she studied it. What was this? Was this a German thing? What was that symbol in the corner? Of all the things that her grandfather had incited, this was by far the strangest.

_Father,_

_I can no longer continue to put up with this 'dual religion' you hope to instill in us. None of us can except Pam. This is blasphemy. You can't seriously expect us to put up with your madness any longer. I don't know what it is you think you're worshipping, but it is not God. They are not facets of God, either. I don't mean to disrespect you or my grandparents. I know you all left Germany in fear because of your faith, and I know many Asatru people were killed and thrown into the same ovens that Jews were. That doesn't make this real. That doesn't make this right. I don't want to be a part of this anymore, and I haven't for years. If I can't make you see that Odin, Sunna, Loki and the rest aren't real, then I just have to call it a quits. I'll pray for you, but we've all decided we're not spending this 'Yule' or Winter Solstice or whatever you want to call it with you. The only one who can still put up with this is Pam._

_Please don't try to pull her any deeper into your madness. There isn't anything good to be found in what you do._

_Sincerely worried,_

_Aaron_

The note had tear stains on it. She wasn't sure whether they were her uncle's or her grandfather's. Regardless, she was beginning to put it together. Some kind of paganism was her grandfather's religion, and he had joined the very Nazis that had killed his people. Why? What did he have to gain from it? He was putting himself in their sights with that action, throwing himself into the line of fire… which they would never suspect. So long as he kept his faith a total secret and did as he was told, he would place his family below suspicion, where they were nothing more than a normal product of their time. They would be not even a blip on the radar. That didn't, couldn't justify the photos that churned her stomach and made her feel freezing in the warmth of the attic. It couldn't make right what he'd done. What kind of man would do such horrible things to innocent people, potentially people of his own?

What kind of man would he have been if he _hadn't_ done everything in his power to save his family? What was he supposed to have done? She reached for the box with intricate symbols, now knowing it must be something of religious value, and reexamined it. It was old, well worn, ancient in a way nothing else they owned was. It was solidly built, so only many years could have slowly worn away at the sturdy construction. Had he brought this box over with him from Germany? Had he had to push his faith away or had he been plagued by guilt and the religious ramifications of what he'd done? What were the rules to Asatru paganism? Was there a special place awaiting him for his actions that had haunted him? She wondered what it was like to do things that could never be undone and then have to sleep at night, wondering what the gods thought of it.

Within the box were several more small toys; a plush unicorn, a bunch of poorly sewn stars, a circle with complicated patterns done poorly in marker on it. Among the things in the box was a locket. Sam opened it, expecting to see a picture of her Grandpa Philip and Grandma Ida, but instead saw a picture of her mother, maybe sixteen or so, beaming in a beautiful black dress with fur trim and a caplet, arm linked with Philip's, who was wearing a dark purple-black scarf over a thick black coat. It was snowing, they were smiling, and she had her head on his shoulder. A small piece of paper was in front of the locket's picture, which she had pulled away and was about to discard when she noticed what was written inside it.

_To remind you of when we did not have to hide what we were. – Philip._


	4. Chapter 4

_Pamela,_

_I cannot believe we're doing this again. Resorting to letters when we live across town is never how I envisioned our lives, but you have to consider the worst case scenario here. I don't want it to be the truth any more than you do. Nothing would make me happier than if I were wrong. If I am, then we have nothing to fear. The question now becomes if we can take that chance. I know that you intend to marry Jeremy Manson. If he's really the father of your child, then that is the right and moral thing to do. I want to purpose, however, an alternative solution to this before you make a lifetime commitment._

_I don't blame you for what happened. You're a beautiful young woman. The fault isn't with you, too young to fully understand the repercussions, to put your mind before your heart. I suppose you learned that from me. I should know better, at my age. I should have intervened. Instead I not only raised you to follow your heart, I encouraged your mistakes, even if I have tried to tell myself that I wasn't doing so all along. I have failed you as a father. I have not done right by you, and I have so much to answer for. I know you are in a very fragile place right now. I do not presume to tell you what to do, but I am begging you as your dear friend and father to abort this baby._

_We cannot bank on Jeremy not recognizing the child is not his. If this baby has the wrong hair or eye color, I do not doubt his intelligence. He has seen you with more than a few men who are friends of yours, but the real cause will be easy enough to pick out. Then what will become of you? What will become of your marriage, your social standing, your place at the synagogue, your reputation? Where could you go where the knowledge would not leak out? How far would you have to go, leaving behind everything you've ever known, just to be able to breathe? I know I am asking you to do something that goes against your morals. Count this blood as on my hands, not yours. What has been done can, in this case, be undone. Tell the man you miscarried and be done with this torrid affair I have so blindly let happen without thought to the future._

_All I want is to protect you, shield you from the fallout. You are my most precious daughter, my perfect jewel, your eyes like cabochon gems, more whole and perfect than robin's eggs. Your kindness is outmatched by your forgiveness. Never did I feel more vulnerable and more ashamed of myself than when you found my past's horrors, but you embraced me as your father again. Over time we came to become more than that, more than two people vaguely connected by blood but true friends. It is as that that I beg you not to let this pregnancy come to term. Please don't put everything you've ever had and ever will in danger._

_I love you. Please remember our trip to Seattle, our Yule night together, that moment under the trees. Please reconsider this._

_Sincerely,_

_Philip_

It took a lot of effort to set the paper down.

Sam wasn't an idiot. She knew she was born eight months after her parents got married. The baby her grandfather was pleading to be aborted was _her_. He hadn't wanted her to be carried to term. He had treated it like it was the coming of something awful. He seemed to view her birth as the spinning of roulette wheel, fearing it would land on the wrong one. She could very well have not been here if he'd had his way, and for what? So he could circumvent her mother having an affair? Alright, she wasn't going to lie, that was a bit odd, given her mother's conservative views and the love that fostered her marriage, but clearly she wasn't the by-product of some unknown man her mother had a fling with. Sure, she'd hit upon all the recessive genes possible. She still looked like part of the family after some digging.

This was the point she began to pack things up. As far as she was concerned, she had solved the mystery entirely. Her grandfather was a Nazi out of necessity, something she would need a long time to come to terms with, but he'd had a family and sincerely loved them, had done everything he could for them. In time she'd be able to handle his existence, his past, and even if she couldn't forgive him, she could come to a point where she could maybe understand, one day. It was a lot to take in. It was no wonder her mother had hidden it from her, quite frankly. Sam wasn't sure how to deal with it _now_; as a child she simply would've been broken by the knowledge. She wasn't sure if her dad knew or not. That would be a lot to tell a guy, even a husband, and with how conservative her dad was it might've been enough to make him leave. Sam felt a pang of sympathy for her mother. That was a lot to hold in.

Her uncle and aunts had never accepted her grandfather's faith. They hadn't been able to reconcile a polytheist Germanic religion with a monotheistic Abrahamic one. That had probably cut him much deeper than anyone realized. His faith had been his motivator, he had done terrible things so his family wouldn't be hunted down for it, he had tried to practice it in a nation built on religious freedom, and in the end only one of his children put up with it. Even his own wife didn't celebrate his holidays with him. The only thing anyone seemed to care about was looking good to other Jews. No wonder, then, that he had picked a favorite so early. Even if Sam didn't like the idea of parents having favorite children, this was a complicated situation and she really did feel a bit of sympathy for Philip on that front. It was just hard to reconcile the sympathetic parts of him with the horrifying parts of him.

So her grandfather had left when Pamela hadn't complied with his wishes for her to get an abortion. She'd done something he viewed as risky. This was where Sam paused. It didn't make sense for him to leave. He loved his daughter dearly. He had said he was trying to prevent a scandal, but him leaving wouldn't make finding his records harder or easier either way. His leaving would only hurt her. It wouldn't help things. How would Philip departing save the family from any kind of scandal when it was abundantly clear that this family had mastered the art of lying and keeping secrets from the community at large? He had nothing to fear. There was no reason for him to depart. He could have stayed and been an unusual but functional part of the family.

Something wasn't adding up here.

She pulled out what she'd put back and picked up a piece of paper at random.

_Philip was there when I got back from prom. I told him not to wait up, and he hadn't. He was doing some Asatru thing and had just got back from the woods. I could tell from the mud on his shoes by the door. He took one look at me and asked what was wrong, and I just fell apart. I cried and he held me and I told him what a horrible night it had been and how that awful boy had tried to feel me up. Philip held me close until I had stopped crying. I called that awful guy an asshole and Philip laughed, told me only I could make swearwords cute. We had ice cream by the fire. We talked until it was nearly two in the morning. I fell asleep and he carried me up the stairs to my room. I don't know what I would do without him._

Sam set it aside. This was not what she was looking for. This was just more proof as to why he _wouldn't_ leave. Frustrated, she went through the entirety of the box. There were many, many things in there. Records in German, pictures in black and white of Philip's family meticulously labeled and sorted, stacks of family photos of her mother, her uncle and aunts, her grandmother at every possible occasion, saved Christmas lists from when her grandfather's brood had been children, drawings from them, some music records, some framed photos, some more pages of Pamela's diary, some letters from Aaron trying to convert Philip to Judaism, an angry letter from Maeve about Philip having a favorite child, and small notes passed between the children or between them and their father. There was nothing here that made his departure make sense. He was close to all of them in differing ways. Even if his marriage was on the rocks, he didn't seem like the kind of person who would abandon them.

In leaning back, her elbow bumped the small box with intricate patterns. She picked it up carefully, staring at the lock. There was no way she could open it without breaking it. But nobody came up here, and she could hear a rustling of papers when she shook it. There was something in here kept even more secret than his Nazism, than his murders, than his religion and his pleas to his daughter to get an abortion. There was something of real value in here, if only she could get to it. She could feel the oldness of the wood, and set the box between her feet, gripping it on either side with them. She grabbed the lid and pulled back as hard as she could. The wood groaned and cracked. She pulled again and again until her hands were aching, and just as she was about to give up and call it a quits, the lid came off in her hands. More papers stared up from the box at her, along with a packet of photos carefully bound.

She reached for the stack of pictures. She undid the string binding them together and pulled one out. Then her mind went blank. There was no thought. She flipped through the pictures, leaving finger print smudges on each. Her uncomprehending lilac eyes took in each picture while her stomach churned and her pulse raced, breath coming quicker in denial. _No, no. No. This can't be what it looks like_, she thought desperately, but the photos were so many and so unashamed in their bluntness. They were portraying exactly the truth without the benefit of it being broken softly to her, if such a thing could be broken gently to any soul.

The first photo was of the two of them kissing in the lights of a glorious Christmas tree.

Arms wrapped around each other in a slow dance at an incredibly fancy restaurant. Pamela planting a kiss on his surprised lips as a photo was snapped somewhere with red leaves and a picturesque fall. Pamela asleep in his lap while he stroked her hair, looking content. A picture of them basking in the glow of a bonfire, one of his arms around her while the other held the camera, her head on his shoulder. They kissed under a Valentine's Day display at some festival, surrounded by roses and happy normal couples. There was one of Philip half undressed, looking startled, cheeks flushed. One of Pamela trying to hold mistletoe over his head and failing due to the height difference. They held onto one another after riding a rollercoaster, laughing at themselves, eyes closed. Even as his hair grayed, the photos just kept coming. Philip with his arms wrapped around Pamela at some amusement park, pressing a kiss to her cheek as she giggled. Philip and Pamela at the circus, with her feeding him cotton candy affectionately. The two of them out dancing somewhere, her dress a flare of pink next to his dark and somber clothing. Pamela holding his hands in hers at the Seattle Space Needle.

Sam put the photos down and, with hands shaking so badly she had to put the paper down to read it, tried to comprehend the words on the paper she was looking at. It only confirmed what she was seeing, what she didn't want to be true, what had to be some incredible misunderstanding.

_I don't feel guilty about what I did. I know he is; I saw the fear go through him when he pulled away, when he ran back to the house, shaking his head. But in the moment before he did, he kissed me back, touched my face, shut his eyes. In that piece of a moment we were perfectly together. Everything was wonderful. Even though he ran away, I don't regret it. I've spent enough time trying to pretend that this wasn't here, that we weren't what we are. I spent so much time and energy trying to avoid it I must've kissed a hundred boys without meaning it, without it being anything but skin touching skin._

_It wasn't just that tonight. It will never be just that. When he holds me the world falls away and I know I'm safe. I know that there's nothing I can't tell him, and there's nothing that he hasn't told me now. If he were really so repulsed by me, if he didn't feel the same way, would he have told me this morning we're going to have Yule together?_

She grabbed the next paper, slapped it down.

_It was at the bonfire he finally broke down. We tumbled next to each other after jumping over it, and I laughed when he got a mouthful of snow. Somehow pulling me to my feet he ended up holding my hands. I could see the indecision, the fear, the reluctance and the want in his eyes. We stood there for a long time, listening to the fire crackle, just staring at each other._

_Finally he whispered, "Are you sure this is what you want?"_

_I said yes._

_He said, "You know you can always end this."_

_I nodded. And then he finally kissed me. Tears ran down his face. I wiped them away and his arms went around my waist, and we stayed there like that until the fire's warmth had us both sweating, so we sat down beside it and talked. His hands shook. His gaze was intense. But he could not for the life of him stop stroking my hair or kissing my cheek, and I think we both know we can't end this. It'd be like trying to stop breathing._

She couldn't read it anymore. She reached for another one, feeling numb, knowing what truth she was hurtling towards even if she didn't want it.

_I told Philip I was pregnant today. He and I had no words, I just clung to him and cried. We know this is his baby. We've been together for four years, perfect and lovely, but never once did we pause and think this would happen. He's so much older than I am, and he and Mom had such a hard time having kids, it took so many tries… this wasn't supposed to happen._

_He placed his hand over my belly for a long time, and told me not to name the baby anything German. I laughed, a little because it was such a silly thing to say, a lot because I was scared. I asked him, "What do you want me to name it, then?"_

_He said, "If you keep it and it's mine, name it Sam."_


	5. Chapter 5

She stumbled down the attic stairs and fell with a crash to floor, neither feeling nor fighting it.

The sound immediately attracted her father. No, not her father. He wasn't her father, he was her mother's husband. She stared at him with new eyes, so silent and still that his heart raced. He rushed to her side, thinking something was wrong. And oh God (gods?), nothing was _right_ anymore. There was nothing, nothing at all that she could trust in. Everyone had lied to her, half her family weaving a web of deception, of falsehoods, hidden sins and skeletons in the closet, keeping her removed from a reality that had been there all along like a shadow behind her. She stared at – well, Jeremy, what else was there to call him? – with a sort of deer in headlights look in her eyes. She had to force her lungs to breathe and her vocal chords to wrap around a few words.

"Did you know?" she asked him, quietly and desperately. "Is that why you sent me up there?"

His expression was blank, confused. "What are you talking about?"

Sam took a great amount of effort to pull herself to shaking feet, and bolted for her room, footsteps thundering. She needed her sanctuary, a perfectly dark place of solitude to hide from everything. She needed to lay down until life stopped being dizzying. Sam gulped for air and couldn't find it, fell through the door of her room and kicked her door shut. Then she laid there and stared at the dark ceiling, head spinning, heart pounding, drenched in cold sweat. She stayed there, trying to get her breath back and desperately trying to unsee the images now firmly in her head of her… her _parents_, together. Her stomach churned and she managed to get to her knees and find the trash can to finally throw up until her stomach had nothing left to give to the effort. Then she sat back, breathing heavily, and listened.

She became aware then of all out screaming. She'd never heard her father yell before, but this was several shades beyond that. The words 'sick', 'wrong', 'Nazi', and 'monster' reached her through the door. There was the sound of something breaking. Her mother screamed back – 'gods', 'life is sacred', 'our daughter' – and then they were screaming over each other and the noise rang and rang in their huge house, echoing, magnified, and Sam just couldn't do it anymore. The raven haired girl flipped the light on and began filling her backpack. Danny, she could go to Danny's, spend the night, and in the morning she'd know how to deal with this and everything would be okay. She threw things into her backpack at random, even a picture of her grandfather – er, father, and ugh, that was never going to sound okay in her head. She grabbed a few pieces of clothing, a random CD, and some make up. She wasn't even thinking, just moving, trying to run away from her own mind.

In the reflection of her make up mirror she saw herself. And she saw Philip's nose, the pointed slant of his face, the purple eyes, the hair dark as night, the skin paler than her mother's and much more so than her father's, even the dark clothing he favored. She didn't look like Sam _Manson_ because truthfully she should have been Sam _Trommler_, and her own reflection disgusted her. She wanted to dye her hair, get color contacts, tan, but even then she would have his face, his smile, his arched eyebrows, a hundred little things that made her her father's daughter. In a flash of motion, she grabbed scissors from her dresser, and instead of giving herself a trim, slashed at her hair, leaving chunks of it on the floor, cutting off her ponytail, eyes wide and brimming with tears, trying to get _him_ off of her like he was a disease and not a progenitor. In the end she only made a wild mess of her now shorter hair, scraped her face with the sharp blades, and she dropped the scissors to the floor, grabbed her bag and without preamble started down the hallway, where the space by the attic now resembled a war zone of papers and photos, her parents' screaming ringing like thunder in her ears.

She stepped on something and looked down. It was the necklace her grandfather had worn in some of the photos. It was what he had taken with him from Germany, the symbol of his gods. Right now she'd never believed in her own God less. Maybe it was insanity, maybe it was mindless hope, but she thought she saw a hint of something in there. Whatever strength it had given him to do horrible things to protect his family, maybe it could lend its' energy to her. Sam pocketed it and then bolted for the door, not hearing her parents calling for her, and ran out into the cold of fall turning to winter, letting the snow drench her, set her bare arms alight with ice, and ran until everything became a blur.

She finally stopped when she couldn't breathe anymore, and slumped against a building's wall. People walked all around her and she swore they _knew_. They knew she was a Nazi's daughter, she was the product of incest, she was something terrible and sick that shouldn't exist. She watched them all with fear and forced her aching ankles to keep moving, keep walking, perpetual motion as she scanned the faces of everyone who passed her with increasing paranoia and anxiety rushing through her. The world was suddenly massive and she was very small. Her feeling of being tiny increased with everyone she passed, seeing each look of concern as contempt, and the now short-haired girl bolted again for the Fenton residence.

She threw her fists against the door in drum-like rapid succession, a mess of tears and shaking from the cold and shock, and still had a hand in the air when Maddie anwered.

"Sam? Goodness, what happened to you? Are you alright?" The redheaded woman frowned, and Sam shook her head slowly, clenching her fists at her sides, trying to still her shaking.

"I – my dad's not my dad – my parents are – had to get away – everyone keeps _staring_," she managed, and Maddie gently placed her hands on her shoulders, comfortingly.

"Come in and I'll make you some hot chocolate, and we'll clean up that cut on your face, okay? We'll talk. You know Jack and I are always here for you, Danny and Tucker. It'll be alright." She guided Sam to the kitchen table, called up to Danny that Sam was there, and left for a second, materializing with a wet washcloth and some bandages. "Here. Just hold still, okay?"

Sam felt the touch but didn't respond. She heard Danny's footsteps and cringed, staring resolutely at the table. "Hey," she barely managed to croak out. "Hi."

"…Sam? What happened?!" His blue eyes went wide as he sat down at the table beside her. "What's going on?"

"Danny," she murmured weakly, looking up at him as if through a fog, "My Dad isn't my dad. My mom…" She couldn't say it. She settled for, "She lied to me. All this time. Everybody lied to me, Danny."

Maddie set the cocoa in front of her. Sam's tears fell into it and made the liquid ripple. When Maddie took a seat by Sam, she didn't complain. She just sat there in silence as everyone processed what she'd said, and suddenly all the words she hadn't had came spilling out. Her throat, which moments ago could barely put three sentences together, now overflowed with words that she couldn't control or take back, falling out of their own accord as she gripped the cocoa mug and let the heat burn her hands.

"They knew each other for years. Dated for four. He wasn't Jewish, he was – some kind of pagan, I think it was Asatru – he left so that if I looked like him nobody would put it together, but now my Dad – only he's not my Dad – has, and they were screaming at each other, and I just had to get out, I couldn't take it-"

"Sam, slow down. Deep breaths," Danny said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. She flinched involuntarily; he shouldn't be touching her, she was unnatural, she was twisted, dirty…

"Can I stay the night?" she asked Maddie weakly, looking up at her brokenly. "I just can't be there right now."

"I'm going to have to call your parents, but yes. Of course you can, sweetie. In the meantime, maybe you should go up to Danny's room. I know you don't want me eavesdropping on your personal life. But I'm here if you need to talk."

Sam nodded, and took her cocoa carefully up the stairs, following Danny to his room. It was comforting in how familiar it was, how this, at least, had stayed the same. This place was one of the few where things still made sense. She took a seat at his desk so she would have a place to set the cocoa, and looked at him. Her shoulders were slumped, her hair was an uneven mess, her eyes almost glazed over; Danny could only watch helplessly as she slipped back into herself. She pulled her father's necklace from her pocket. It was a relic from a bygone era, from a faith she didn't know the slightest, tiniest thing about, but it stared up at her as the last piece of anything she might ever have that was his, that was her father's, that was a piece of the man who had helped create her.

"Sam? Are you… well, okay, you're not alright, but what's going on, exactly? I mean, your hair…"

"Danny, my Mom knew. All these years, she knew who my dad was, and she never told anyone. And I went into the attic, thinking I'd just find some photos or something, but… everything I found out about him doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense anymore. I just want today to be over, but when I wake up I know it'll still be real."

Gently, he asked, "What was he like?"

"Thirty or forty years older than her."

He cringed a little.

She continued quietly. "He wasn't Jewish, but he didn't mind being with a Jew. I think they were more concerned about other things. I mean, your Dad's a Christian and your Mom's an atheist, and they worked out. So maybe that part's not weird."

"Yeah, I get that. My parents always said love is more important. What religion did you say he was?"

"Germanic pagan. I don't know anything about it, though. I guess I'll have to research it? I'm not sure I want to. He left me, Danny."

He reached out to take her hand. "He didn't want your Mom's marriage to implode, Sam. He was protecting you."

That was worth considering. After it became clear Pamela wasn't going to have an abortion, he hadn't tried to force her into it. He hadn't continued to push it. Life was sacred to her mother as a Jew, and as a person, and Philip had respected that as much as his differing views had allowed him to. He'd just done the one thing he really could do. All his life he'd done what he could to protect his family, from becoming a Nazi to bringing his family over to America to hiding his faith. He had done everything in his power to keep their family safe and free from scandal or investigation. If he'd stayed the media could have gotten ahold of what happened and all Hell could have broken loose.

What would happen now? Would her Dad stop being her Dad? Would he go to the press and drag her Mom through the mud? Would they get a divorce? What would her mother do for money then? What would happen if the media got ahold of this, would her mother, grandmother, her uncle and aunts all make national news? Would she be able to go to school? Would she have to change her name and move away? And Danny, Tucker – would they be able to accept her if they knew whose daughter she was? How was her mother going to treat her? Her grandmother? How was _anything _going to be now?

She took deep gulps of her hot cocoa, and tried to find a reason to face the future with any hope.


	6. Chapter 6

Her father loved her. Her father left her. He was a loving man. He was a Nazi.

Sam had gotten a bed in the Fenton's guest room, but she wasn't sleeping. She couldn't stop shaking. She was too hot, then too cold, then too hot. She paced the room, she remade the bed, she watched the phone as if her parents would suddenly call. Her grandmother was already in the hospital with cardiac problems – once news of this hit, Sam was sure she'd get a phone call saying it was too much for her. She wondered how much her Grandma Ida knew. She'd always treated Sam lovingly, but that didn't mean she didn't know, did it? She had to have known Philip and Pamela had a relationship like that, they couldn't have kept it secret from everyone in their family – or did they? Maeve accused Philip of picking favorites, Aaron wanted him to convert, but they didn't seem to catch onto the fact more was going on. Who knew what, exactly? How many people had been lying to her? Was there anyone she could trust?

Every time she started to drift off to sleep, images would haunt her of everything her… father, grandfather, what in God's name was she supposed to call him, had done. The photos of bodies, the work he'd been commissioned for, the flawlessly executed mutilation of innocent people and his stoic face. He had been so in his element, so able to separate his conscience from his work. To do what needed to be done he had just simply pushed his feelings aside. And the results were haunting, broken people and broken corpses, the workday of a man who had divorced himself from his emotions. Someone who did _that_ was her father. Someone who murdered her people-

Well, half her people. The other half of her wasn't even Jewish.

Except it'd be closer to a fourth Jewish, given the genetics involved.

Sam had thrown up throughout the night and now, at two in the morning, she was pretty much spent. Her body was tired but her mind wasn't able to shut down. All she could think of was how many things she didn't know, how much she did, and how many things she couldn't understand. There were no more certainties, no more steady facts to rely on, nothing she could stand on anymore. Everything had shifted out from under her, leaving her stranded in a world she no longer saw clearly – one she'd never seen clearly. Shaking, pacing, thinking, the world was a blur of too many thoughts and precious few seconds, the future an unknowable eternity she couldn't bring herself to picture.

Life will go on. Those were the words that bounced through her head, and they were the opposite of reassurance. They were damnation itself, the promise of a future ahead of her. There were so many things that could go wrong, it was hard to even comprehend their number now. Even if nothing went wrong, it already had, it had because she was here and she was broken, wrong, something that shouldn't exist, something vile. She couldn't imagine going to school. She couldn't imagine hanging out with Tucker and Danny. She couldn't see as far ahead as breakfast without feeling like she wanted to run away until her legs gave out on her. Life was going to go on and it wasn't going to wait for her to be ready, it was going to drag her forward before she'd had any time for her wounds to heal, before she could even identify what wounds she had. It was going to sprint forwards while she did her best to keep up.

She couldn't talk to anyone. She needed to talk to someone. Such was her state of mind when she pulled out her cellphone and dialed her uncle's number in the dead of night. She sat on the edge of the bed, fingers tapping out nervous patterns on the bedspread. Long, pale fingers, like her father's… the same as the hands that he had, the hands that had killed Jews, the hands that had cupped her mother's face. Even her _hands_ were ugly to her. No amount of avoiding mirrors was going to be able to fix this, but she tore her eyes away from her hand to force it to the ground. There, at least, there was nothing staring back up at her.

Sam barely waited for Aaron to ask who it was before she said, "This is about Philip Trommler."

There was a pause. "Sam, why do you want to talk about your grandfather at this hour?"

"I guess my Mom didn't call you." She laughed, a hiccup that was a split hair away from a sob. "I guess she's still lying." A few chuckles tore their way out of her chest, when there was nothing funny about the situation at all.

"…what happened?" he asked gently, soothingly, that tone Sam had long learned was his 'I am your rabbi, you can confide in me' tone.

She flopped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. Why had she called? She didn't want to go over the details of what happened with her best friend in the world, her uncle wasn't going to help matters. Instead of saying that, however, she just replied, "I was about to ask you the same thing."

"I don't know what you mean." His voice was perfectly even. Too perfect.

"Yes, you do. You can come clean now or when Mom's husband calls you about it. All my life you told me my grandfather was a nice Jewish man from England and he was a doctor. Right now I'm holding a necklace with some Asatru symbol on it that has writing on the back in something that's very definitely not English. If I had a guess, I'd go with German." She was angry, she realized. She was furious with Aaron, for things that were and weren't his fault, yet her voice was calm, icy even, icicles dripping from every word. She was simply so furious that no amount of screaming was going to ever convey a fraction of what she felt. She held the necklace aloft, trying to describe the pattern to her uncle, who already knew it all too well. "It's like a wheel in the center, looks more like a snowflake on the outside? Sound familiar?"

The silence was deafening.

"You can tell me what you know or I can hang up and start calling up my aunts."

She wanted exact answers from at least one source, and Aaron was either going to supply them or she was going to start hunting people down until they bore some fruit. Sam wasn't particularly concerned with how nice she was being. The word was spiraling out from under her; she deserved to have at least one person talk to her like an adult. Just a drop of honesty would keep her from falling further down. She was in a dark place, in need of a helping hand. She was laying at the bottom of a hole so deep she couldn't see any light, waiting for someone to send down a rope so she could be hauled out of this. Aaron had known more than the others. Partially it was because he was the religious one, partially it was because he was always perceptive, capable of seeing what other people didn't. He couldn't have been blind to everything. It wasn't possible. How many members of her family had lied to her? She couldn't be certain, but she could say firmly that he was one of them.

"Answer me this, Aaron. Who in this family do I most look like?"

"…Sam. Nobody knew they had taken things that far," he rushed to explain, quickly. "They had moved away from each other, Pam was seeing other men. Everyone thought it was a phase. That it was dying out. My mother didn't even know they were really a thing, she didn't believe he'd do something like that, we all-"

"You _lied_ to me. Did you lie to Grandma Ida, too?" she demanded, trying to fit her doting grandmother into the equation. It was impossible that she didn't know, but impossible for her to know and treat Sam so kindly.

He sighed. It was like a rush of static in her ear. "We protected her from what she couldn't take. She chose to believe that he didn't leave, something bad must've happened, and she chose to believe you took after him because you just did."

"Maeve. Shannon. What do they know?"

"Sam, you really don't want to go down this road-"

"It's too late. I'm already there. Maeve. Shannon. Do they know?"

"Maeve knows about Philip and Pamela. She didn't put it together what that meant for you. Shannon doesn't know anything." He took a deep breath, and then another. "Look, are you alright? Should I talk to your mother?"

"You should."

She hung up, and threw her cellphone at the wall. It didn't break, but it was cathartic. Sam shut her painfully purple eyes, eyes she'd never like again, and tried to accept what she'd been told. Liars, liars and the willfully blind to the truth, layers of deception, people lying to each other in the same family, about their own family, and for years. Decades, at this point, decades of people not stating the blatantly obvious. She almost understood, wanted to be lied to, wanted to be as oblivious as her aunt Shannon, but she couldn't go back to that. Her grandmother had chosen not to know about Philip's crimes as a Nazi, she and Maeve had chosen not to know what was going on between Philip and Pamela, and Aaron had chosen to keep the lies up and running and functioning as best he could for as long as he could. Aaron, the one she trusted to be honest, the one piece of steadfast reliability that kept everyone together, had been using layers and layers of lies to keep them from breaking apart. What was it her grandfather/father had said? Lies were like glass wings, beautiful until they broke, and then the shards began to cut.

Sam turned over the necklace in her hands. It was ancient but well preserved, a relic of a time when maybe he hadn't been a Nazi or a liar or a man who fell in love with all the wrong people. She didn't know anything about the Asatru other than that they believed in many gods and they jumped over bonfires at Yule, but it was enough to make her picture him as a young black haired boy in Germany, living on the fringes of polite society but happy with his family, happy, oblivious to the coming War, to how everything good would be snuffed out like a flame. In a way she could almost connect with him. She knew what it was like to have everything upended at a moment's notice, to go from normal to broken at record speed. Had his faith offered any comfort? Had he had to kill one of his own people?

It occurred to her that he was twenty-something years older than her Grandma Ida. That meant he was dead, wherever he'd run off to, and he could never give her the answers she wanted, the answers she needed. He was gone, leaving her with only her name and photos ghastly and mundane, and a necklace with an ancient symbol on it. Would knowing him have made this easier? Would he have been able to explain this to her, look into her eyes that were mirrors of his, tell her the whys and the whatfors of his actions? Would he have loved her? Would he be proud of her? It was insane to care about the opinion of a sick man, but sick and twisted as he had been, he was still… he was still her father. Half of her. She was rebellious, skirting the outside of normalcy, always pushing boundaries, always eccentric. Was he any of those things?

Did she want to be like him, did she merely want answers, or did she simply want to not be like him at all?

She picked herself up from the bed and made her way to the bathroom. There, she stared into the mirror with great intensity. She could almost see him, see his aged features, the eyes haunted by unspeakable actions, regrets, hope, pain, and ultimately loneliness. And then she _was_ seeing him. She couldn't explain it. Her vision was blurred at the edges, but he was clear to her. She slipped the necklace on. He placed his hand against the glass of the mirror on his end, and she placed hers over his. Tears tumbled down her cheeks, not in a sob, simply a resolute pain as her thoughts swirled into a hurricane. This was not real. She knew this was a bad sign, a red flag, but…

Sam didn't care about red flags anymore. All she wanted was not to be like the man in the mirror, not to let the glass of lies shatter underneath anyone else and destroy them. It was time to tell Danny, to tell him everything, all the horrible truths, all the things that were eating her up inside, before the darkness swallowed her whole. She was Sam Manson, Sam Trommler, Sam. She would not break. She would survive. Or at the very least, she would try.

On tired and weary feet, she made her way to Danny's bedroom, and knocked on the door. He answered in record time, looking concerned. For a moment she stared at him dimly. Then she pulled herself together enough to speak. In the dim light of the unlit hallway, with only the moonlight streaming through the windows, she felt ghostly, detached, unable to process the magnitude of what she was about to do. But she would not be her father, her uncle, her mother. She would not lie to save herself or her reputation. If Danny hated her after this, then so be it. Sam could no longer face falsehoods. She would rather live in honest rejection than speak a single more lie to anyone. Truth was like sunlight, and she needed its' warmth, so cold and dark was the place she had found herself in at this point.

"Sam, what-"

"My grandfather is my father," she stated bluntly, and waited for his reaction, one hand clutching the precious necklace her father had left behind. Danny stared at her. "My mother and my grandfather – understand?"

The silence was so loud he may as well have been screaming.


End file.
